“I have a nagging memory about the word Ortygia,” I told Deeds; “I think that somewhere I saw that it really meant ‘Quail Island’ and that it was one of the possible sites where Ulysses (always accident prone when it came to females) ran into a lot of trouble with Circe.” It would need the Lexicon to check this vague and irritating notion. Deeds said that in the islands off the coast of Turkey there were some small and remote ones famous for their quails; and that the women hunted them with a curious kind of little net like a lacrosse stick which had two large eyes painted on it. It resembled a strange savage totem. When the quails saw the eyes they crouched down and seemed hypnotized, and they were easily netted. He had often wondered whether this was an ancient survival, this curious hunting art.
Today, however, Quail Island was agreeably crowded with loafers drinking lemonade and waving to us as we passed over the narrow causeway and slowed almost to a halt in front of the Temple of Apollo — disappointingly battered and placed all askew with reference to the modern town in which it had got itself stuck — it seemed almost by accident. It had a forlorn benignity in the sunlight but it would need a very advanced state of rapturous romanticism to feel deeply moved by it. Mario drew rein for the statutory pause and himself rested with his forehead on his arms; he did not give poor Apollo as much as a glance. I think that he never had given it a glance or a thought. Was he right or wrong, I wondered? Here we were all politely craning our necks, while the more industrious had their noses buried in their guides. The bus had attracted a crowd of children who were equally indifferent to Apollo and found us much more interesting; they proposed to try and stick us up for the price of a drink. Negotiations were opened in a strange lingua franca which seemed part Swedish and part English. They did not get very far, for suddenly, like a lion waking and bounding from his lair, Mario rushed out of the bus and after them with a deep and frightful growling which sent them rushing widdershins. It was as decisive as the Battle of Himera, the enemy forces were scattered and ran screaming down the side streets while Mario with a grin like a harvest moon, regained the bus and started up the motor again.
Deeds’s Guide was all carefully marked up with symbols which strongly suggested the Sikel alphabet or Linear B. Intrigued, I asked him what they represented. “I am evaluating my own Sicily,” he said. “There are four terms, four values for the monuments. Together they form the word Moss. M is for must, O is for ought really, SH is for should really, and SK is for skip. Over the years my taste has varied a little but not so much. I see for example that for old Apollo I have given him an ‘ought really’.… We can’t afford to skip him outright on historical grounds, but he doesn’t invigorate one. But just you wait a moment.” I waited and it was not for long, for Mario crawled down a couple of streets so narrow that we could have touched the walls without leaning forward — and at last into the fine airy cathedral square. It was not only spacious but it was smothered in oleander blossom — full-grown trees this time and in full flower. It was no surprise in this halcyon air to hear a girl singing, the cooing of doves, and the brisk clip-clop of the little colored fiacres which plied for hire in this enchanted corner of Quail Island, as I dared to call it in my own mind — until either Liddell or Scott or both told me I was all wrong. We drew up outside the cathedral and Roberto had a sudden access of hopelessness. “There is so much to tell,” he said wringing his hands at the immensity of the task, “we should really stay a week or a month.… But the important thing is to look first!”
It was a happy injunction, and we clambered down from the bus in a sunshine fragrant with flower smells to follow him into the deep booming warmth of the old church which was surprising and unreal — and above all sublimely beautiful. One felt that little knock at the heart which told one that we were really visiting the heart of the island — the quick or quiddity of Sicily. Why is it so astonishing a place? It takes a moment’s thought and a hundred paces down the side street to analyze its singularity. For the ancient Greek temple, or what remains of it (the remains are really considerable), has been comfortably and capaciously cocooned in the Christian edifice without attempting to disguise the modernity of the successor to Gelon’s noble construction.
You would think that this simple but daring idea would result in a dreadful fiasco. But you are astonished to find the result deeply harmonious and congruent; it has a peaceful feeling of inevitability, as if it had been achieved during sleep, unerringly. I think everyone in the party felt a strong tug of admiration at these fine proportions, and the simple dignity of the whole conception. It was also a sort of living X-ray of our whole culture, or let us say, the history of the religious impulse in one vivid cross section. Usually the age that succeeds manages to smash everything and sweep it, if not under the carpet, at least into the new construction. Here we were standing on a spot which had been consecrated ground before the Greeks, then during the Greek reign, and finally for the Christians.… The past had been not razed but accepted and accommodated with reassuring tact and ampleness. I felt suddenly like chuckling as I walked about inside this honeycomb — so full of treasures, a real Ark of the human covenant. For the first time in my life I didn’t feel anti-Christian. Roberto must have been used to seeing the impact of this lovely spot upon his tourists for he did nothing, said nothing, just stood by with his hands in his pockets, waiting to brief us when we so desired.
In one side chapel there was some sort of office being read aloud by a young sleek priest. His only congregation consisted of two old washerwomen who seemed to be half-asleep. But in the duskier hinterland of the church there were children skirmishing and their sharp little voices made the priest half cock a reproachful eye in their direction. But the reading went on with a suavity which suggested not only his pleasure in language but also the knowledge that he had a fine voice for poetry. He was clad all in green, a color which I usually associated with Byzantine robes. He looked like a slim and self-possessed green lizard standing at the elaborately carved lectern.